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Table of Metacharacters

Many characters have special meaning in the NeXtMidas shell. This table lists their precedence (from highest to lowest) and function.

Character Position Function
& end Continues command to next line. In a macro, the line following is concatenated without its leading white space.
&& end No continuation, becomes literal final &
? end Prompts for command arguments. Does not function within macros.
$ start Forces command to be executed in the shell that is running NeXtMidas (instead of a subshell). This is run from Java and does not affect your Unix or other shell.
$$ start Forces command to operating system. This will affect your Unix or other shell.
!
(bang)
start Recalls recent commands.
!
(bang)
anywhere Designates inline commenting within a macro (except within doublequotes).
|
(pipe)
between arguments Used by commands such as PLOT to indicate a group of files. Also used by some commands to indicate multiple mask (flag) values.
/ after command name Applies following switch to command.
,
(comma)
between arguments Separates arguments.
 
(space)
between arguments Separates arguments.
^
(caret)
before name Forces the substitution of the result or macro argument name following.
{ } after a caret Defines the range of characters to which the caret (^) applies.
{ } anywhere Defines the start and end to a NeXtMidas table definition (see Tables).
{ } after filename Treats characters in the brackets as file name qualifiers.
" " around argument Preserves characters bracketed by " " as a leteral string argument, leaving the white space and capitalization alone.
% before macro name Designates the macro as a user macro.
_
(underscore)
before file name Designates the file name as the name of a pipe in a piped macro.
( ) after file name Treats characters bracketed by ( ) as a file name trimmer.
( ) around expression Groups expressions in an inline calculation.
[ ] after a STARTMACRO argument Defines the default value for that argument.
[ ] within ASK prompt Defines the default for the ASK prompt.
:
(colon)
between type and name Separates type from argument or result label.
:
(colon)
in trim qualifier Separates start from end.